


See me Bare my Teeth for You

by Xyriath



Series: Who Are You, Really? [3]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: Mirror Universe
Genre: Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-18 00:21:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3549062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xyriath/pseuds/Xyriath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It couldn't stay hidden forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	See me Bare my Teeth for You

**Author's Note:**

> Sincerest apologies that the final one took so long; I wanted to get it so very, very perfect so as to not avoid ruining the rest of the series. I hope you all enjoy!

The entire Academy was silent; no one would dare make a noise, not now.  Not during the ceremony for the Empire’s newest captain—and the youngest in history.

After all, the new captain had a reputation. No one doubted that he would gut whoever ruined his much-deserved pomp and circumstance with a cheerful smile on his face.

Leonard just watched, breathless.

Even Christopher Pike looked pleased; what might have been admiration glinted in his eye as he passed command of his ship to Jim Kirk.  After all, Jim had provided them a means to destroy the Romulans utterly, and the Klingons were already on the run.  Even Pike, who was legendary for his cruelty, seemed to be proud of his protégé.

It likely helped that the man was now an Admiral.

(Normally, Leonard wouldn’t have given an admiral in a wheelchair two weeks to live—if he were being generous.  But something about Pike had him suspecting that anyone who thought the same and took the opportunity would regret it.)

Leonard understood what he was trying to suppress, understood that pride.  There was simply something about Jim Kirk, a dark charisma that earned him a loyalty that usually took years to earn in a few short weeks.

Of course, Leonard had to acknowledge his bias.  He was closer than most—closer than any of them, the steel strength of their soulbond practically singing in his mind. He had a front row seat to the deadliness and brilliance that was Jim Kirk’s mind, and it filled him with equal parts awe and terror.

So long as Jim didn’t know.

—

“We’ve made it, Bones.”

The whispered words were meant for no one but him.  Leonard didn’t have to look over to know that the glimmer in Jim’s eye was one of triumph.

He turned anyway.

"We, Jim?"  He didn’t bother containing the wry tone of his voice.  "Sharin’ credit?"

Instead of a knife to the gut, Bones got a smile, though it went straight to the same place anyway.

"Well, if it has to be anyone, I’d rather it be you."

The casual nature of Jim’s tone couldn’t diminish the staggering weight of his words, which left Leonard breathless to the point that he didn’t even have the presence of mind to leap away when Jim’s hand darted out to grip, vicelike, around Leonard’s arm.

Nor did he have the time to yank away before Jim reversed his grip and raised it, lifting Leonard’s hand to his face.

"You were injured."

Jim’s tone, so childishly… peeved, nearly sent Leonard dissolving into a bout of nervous, near-hysterical laughter.  He glanced down: the “injury” in question was a slice across the back of Leonard’s hand.  It had probably happened in the explosion during which Doctor Puri had met his… untimely end, perhaps even a souvenir from the man himself, but Leonard hadn’t even noticed in the days that followed.

"You should get it, though," Jim continued, tone distant as he stared at the cut—scratch, really.  "Credit.  And plenty."

A funny feeling ran up Leonard’s spine, a shiver of—what?  Anticipation?  Disbelief?  Excitement?  This was Jim Kirk, best and brightest at the Academy, and he shared glory with no one.

He didn’t move as Jim lifted the hand close to his face, far closer than he needed to examine the cut.  And then Jim turned the hand over, and it was so close to Jim’s lips, and he could feel the breath stirring against his palm as Jim whispered, “Near everyone on the ship would’ve been dead without you.”

And then Leonard was trying not to fall over as Jim’s lips brushed over the palm, gently, oh so gently, as Leonard stared with his mouth half-open in awe—

Those electric blue eyes met his with a jolt that dug straight into Leonard’s soul, and Jim dropped the hand as if he had felt the shock, the painful jolt that seared through him.

"Get that looked at," Jim snapped, turning on his heel and walking out of the room with a rapidity that left Leonard with an imbalance greater than any he had ever known.

—

The gleaming of the silver lady’s halls rivaled the one so often found in the eye of her captain for brilliance, Leonard thought, as he traveled along them.  A beautiful ship, and one that the two of them had earned with every drop of sweat and blood it had cost them.

"Enter," called the voice on the other side of the door as it slid open with a hiss.

Leonard stepped through, a now-familiar sensation of warmth spreading up through his chest at the sight of his soulmate.  His soulmate.  Not terribly long ago, using the word “soulmate” in relation to Jim Kirk would have terrified him without exception, but after the other day…

"Bones."  The voice was as vibrant, self-assured, as usual, the expression almost pleasant.  Leonard found the experience an unusual one, though not unpleasant.*

"Captain," Leonard drawled back, his tone an expression of informality that only he could get away with, and he knows it.

"How have you enjoyed your first week on the ISS Enterprise, doctor?" Jim asked with a coy note dancing across his tone.  Leonard smirked.  It had certainly been an eventful one.  A short and brutal response to a rebellion had left an outer planet with tens of thousands of casualties and Leonard with several new subjects for the Empire’s new research into the effects that alien corrosive chemicals had on the flesh of rebel leaders.  Just in case, of course, that science should ever find a need for that data.

"Damn enjoyable," Leonard drawled back with a smirk.  "We’re really enjoyin’ the toys we got down in medical research."

"Toys.  Hmm," Jim mused.  "I can only imagine."  His eyes stared straight into Leonard’s, pinning him there as effectively as a fly caught by its wings.  “I have to say, I find myself a little… jealous.”

The electric current that constantly ran between them shifted, twanging into a higher frequency, one that seemed to shriek danger!  Leonard moved before Jim, but Jim was as fast as a snake; always had been, and his thumb had jammed into his radial nerve and driven Leonard down to his knees before he could get more than two feet.

The telltale buzz of magnetic cuffs broke through Leonard’s gasp of pain, then clinked around his wrists and slammed into the wall.

Leonard jerked his head up, eyes wide with panic and fury as he tried to shuffle his feet into a standing position.  “You son of a—”

The agonizer Jim shoved into his chest sent his knees crumpling again and tore a scream from his throat.

When Leonard could glare up at him again, fury and terror coursing through him in equal measures, Jim’s face was so close that he could see the faint red glow of his eye illuminating his face, twisting it into something demonic that finally matched the appearance of Jim Kirk to his heart.

“Never could have fun like this at the Academy, could we, Bones?” Jim murmured, an old-fashioned knife in his hand leaving Leonard wondering from where the fucker had pulled the thing.  It traced against the knuckles on the back of his hand, then up and down his knuckles.  “Bones.  I wonder if we could get a good look at yours.”  The back of Leonard’s hand again.  “These are metacarpals, right?  And…” The point dug into a finger.  “A proximal phalange.”

Leonard’s dry mouth had taken a while to be able to collect anything at all inside of it, but once he had enough wetness to do something with, he gathered it and spat straight onto Jim’s face.

The backhand rocked his head away, and Leonard tasted blood, but he simply spat that onto him as well.

The agonizer sent him crumpling again, suspended only by his wrists, and as the knife gleamed again, Leonard barely heard Jim whisper, angrily, not a question, but a declaration.

“What are you doing to me?”

—

“We’ve always been friends, right Bones?”

Leonard couldn’t answer, the ragged breaths the only thing that he could force from his lungs as he glared up at Jim Kirk.  He tried to work his mouth again, to spit on his face as he had before, but an invisible, heavy force held him down, completely intangible but as immovable as a mountain, despite there not being a single restraint in sight.

Jim had learned how to use the soulbond.

“Always.  I thought, anyway.  Whenever I saw your goddamn smug face, though, I started to wonder.  And now I do.  You were so so cocky that you had me on some sort of fucking leash.”

“No,” Leonard managed to gasp out, a greater effort than he had put into anything that day.  “Never—”

And then he was silent again, only able to watch the knife helplessly as it traced down his chest, reopening scars that had barely closed the night before, and the night before that, and the—

“Fucking liar,” Jim hissed, gripping Leonard’s hair and slamming his head back against the wall.  “You saw me, knew I’d be amazing.  So you decided to ride on my fucking coat tails.  Make me think you were worth something, when all you wanted was a shield.  And now you’re too much of a fucking coward even to fight back.  I’m disappointed, Bones.”

Leonard tried again, tried to get the words out, but his effort earlier had been all he could muster; nothing came out but a soft, low moan.  The thought that Jim could think that of him—it was ten times more awful than if he had decided to do it because Leonard was a threat, or just on a whim.

That would have made Leonard furious.  This simply left him humiliated.

He closed his eyes, gasping again as the knife met flesh again.  He nearly wished for the agonizer again instead of something more decidedly… personal.

But then he tasted blood again, a warm, firm, and deceptively soft presence against his lips, and when he forced open his eyelids a hair, he was confronted with Jim Kirk’s face, much closer than he would have ever imagined, eyes closed—

And then he realized that Jim was kissing him.

He couldn’t stop himself; couldn’t process anything but the lips against his, the tongue slipping into his mouth, the shocking warmth and tenderness behind it all.  Without realizing, his hands had lifted to Jim’s jaw, cradling it, as he pressed his lips back, moaning slightly at the rightness, the perfection of it all—

And then that vice grip was back on his wrists, slamming them against the wall, the one, brief moment of light in a cloudy sky wrenched away from him as Jim yanked his head back, glaring at Leonard with fury in his eyes and blood on his mouth.

“What are you doing to me?” he hissed, face twisted in an ugly expression of hatred, and it finally clicked for Leonard.

Jim had no idea.

—

Leonard was still unable to believe that, after all of that, he had simply… walked away.

But here he was, still, three weeks into his station on the Enterprise, and aside from the first week of hell, there had been… nothing.

They had barely seen each other, even, and Leonard knew that that had only to be by design.  Even at the Academy, Jim rarely went more than a couple of days without ending up at Leonard’s doorstep to be patched up.

Well, now, perhaps, as captain of the ISS Enterprise, he had some new person eager to take care of him after getting into scrapes.  Though the rational part of Leonard’s mind insisted that was ridiculous, that Jim trusted no one enough to allow them that, every other part of it seethed with—

With jealousy.

Unfortunately, Leonard hadn’t been the only one to notice the captain’s lack of attention lately.

“So I hear you and Kirk used to be pretty buddy-buddy, McCoy.”

Leonard’s head snapped up to glare at the crewmember who had sat next to him, distracting him from going through the medical files on his PADD.  With both the dig at his relationship with Jim, and the lack of respect towards him—calling him “Kirk” instead of “Captain”—Leonard was already seeing red.

“We are,” Leonard snapped, setting down the PADD, crossing his arms, and glaring.  “Why, you got somethin’ to say about it?”

“Not from what I’ve heard around,” the man says with a smirk.  “In fact, from what I hear, he seems like he wants rid of you.”

It would always be the cockiness of these types that was their end; the man might as well have said outright to Leonard, “I’m going to stab you to try and get in good with the Captain.”

Leonard could have told him that it never would have worked, but it was much more effective to stand, drawing his scalpel and stepping to the side as a blade sliced through the air where Leonard had just been sitting.

When he took a step back, however, he realized there might be slight trouble.  While Leonard was quite excellent with the precision strikes that a smaller blade required, this jackass had a goddamned pigsticker of a knife, and seemed to know enough to keep it between him and Leonard.  Where had he been hiding the goddamned thing, anyway?

He ignored the tables clearing around them as his eyes flicked across the man’s stance, evaluating him for weaknesses, openings—

“Take him,” a cold voice rang out.

Leonard was too focused to see the two large forms that came up behind his attacker, and by the time he realized that the man’s arms were pinned behind him, his own were as well.  He snarled and wrenched his arms against whatever was holding them there, but the crewmembers behind him didn’t budge.

Security, then.

And Leonard recognized the man and the woman holding his attacker back.  The man, especially—proof that Jim Kirk inspired enough loyalty that he could nickname a man “cupcake” and still win him over.

So this was Jim’s security.  Which meant—

“I meant take him, you idiots,” a cold drawl sounded from behind and to the left of Leonard, and he craned his neck to see Jim gesturing idly at his attacker, watching the scene with unconcerned eyes.

The arms around Leonard loosened, allowing him to tug his own out from their grip and rub his wrists, working the feeling back into them.  Jim Kirk certainly chose his guards wisely.

Jim simply watched the two of them, nothing more than a vaguely interested expression on his face, as if they were small curiosities but nothing especially remarkable.  The mess hall was dead silent.

Right when Leonard thought that it might be prudent to speak up, Jim’s voice rang out once again.

“Space him.”

Though the immediate protests of the crewmember rose above the sudden murmured din of the mess hall, Jim ignored it, turning away from Leonard’s attacker as if the man were already dead.  This meant, however, that he now focused his electric gaze on Leonard.

“You.  My quarters.  Now.”

Leonard took a deep breath and nodded, but Jim had turned before he could do so.  Still, Leonard didn’t miss what Jim had just done: though he had not completely allied himself with Leonard, he had let the entire ship know that he was not to be touched.

It was a roundabout way of protecting him, but effective.  And nothing that effective could be coincidental.

The implications were still circling through his mind when Jim’s door hissed shut behind him.  He looked up, lifting a shoulder slightly, expecting an attack, perhaps, a quick lashing out, but nothing of the sort came.  In fact, Leonard was nearly positive that, for a moment, something resembling an extreme reluctance flickered in the backs of Jim’s eyes.

“Explain, Bones.  Or you’ll join Riley as space dust.”

Suppressing a shudder at the thought of being trapped out there, Leonard took a deep breath, staring Jim straight in the eye.

If this were anyone else, Leonard would kill them.  But this was Jim, Jim Kirk, his soulmate, who had no idea.

“It’s a soul bond, Jim.”

“A—what?  That shit—it just happens in stories.  It’s not real.  If you’re fucking with me—”

“I’m not fucking with you.  I’m not.  It’s real, and it’s a documented medical phenomenon.  It just ain’t common—”

“How long have you known?”

The sharp question left Leonard blinking, though whether in surprise at the interruption or that he hadn’t accompanied it with something painful, he wasn’t quite sure.

“Since we met, about.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”  Jim’s voice had lowered now, down to that silky, dangerous tone he got when he was very angry and about to do something about it.  Leonard, however, had had enough of this game.

“Of course I goddamned didn’t!” he snarled, stepping forward and jabbing a finger straight into Jim’s chest.  “Look at what you did when you found out I couldn’t fight back!  You ain’t exactly got the most responsible track record, kid.”

Jim, instead of taking off Leonard’s hand, looked surprised.  Genuinely, startlingly blindsided.  “That was why,” he said, sounding stunned and almost wondering.

Leonard rolled his eyes heavenward.  “Yes!  That was why!  You were usin’ the damned bond to keep me still and like hell I was gonna give you more of an idea of what you could hold over me!”

Leonard expected some sort of retribution, but right now he couldn’t care less.  He watched as the pieces shuffled around in Jim’s mind, the expression of clarity when they finally clicked together, and the intensity of his blue eyes when he lifted them to meet Leonard’s.

“Couldn’t you have?”

“Yes, I coulda.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

Another surge of annoyance rippled through Leonard.  “Because I didn’t want to!”

The answer made perfect sense in Leonard’s mind.  Despite everything, despite the torture and the uncertainty and the fear, Leonard didn’t hate Jim, and knew by now that he never could.  To harm him was simply… unthinkable.  And Leonard knew that, now that Jim was aware of the bond, he could feel every bit of that knowledge.

Instead of leaving him eager to take advantage, however, it simply seemed to leave him floored.

“Really?”  Jim had never sounded so perplexed in his entire life, Leonard was fairly certain.

He threw his hands up in the air.

“If you’re gonna keep this shit up, I’m leaving,” he snapped, turning to go.

“No, wait!”

Jim’s hand snaked out to grab Leonard’s arm again—but this time, it was surprisingly gentle.  It was that, along with the almost pleading tone in Jim’s voice, that caused Leonard to pause, then turn.

“We’re… soulmates.  You’re my soulmate.”

Leonard had thought he was too annoyed to feel much of anything else, but the way that Jim said the word, with an uncharacteristic reverence, sent shivers down his back in a way that thrilled him rather than made him fear.

“Yes.”

“I’m soulmates with you.”

“I—yeah, you are.”

The silence stretched between the two of them for several moments, until—

“We could be fucking awesome.”

Jim breathed the words so softly that, for a moment, Leonard wasn’t sure that he heard them.

“What?”

Jim’s eyes met Leonard’s again, feverishly bright.  “You and I.  We’re soulmates.  We could—you know what that means.  Of course you do.”  Jim turned—he turned his back to Leonard—running his hands through his hair and pacing as Leonard slowly started to process that, beyond his wildest of hopes, Jim might—

“We’ll rule the fucking galaxy,” Jim growled, and Leonard knew that the triumph in his voice was matched in the brilliance of his eyes.  “You and me, Bones, fuck—”

Leonard felt as if a dam was shattering inside him, a dam of frustration and denial and bitterness giving way to hope and excitement and overwhelming joy and he knew from the way that Jim’s back straightened that he could feel it and—

His hands thrust out to grab the fabric of Jim’s shirt, yanking him forward into a kiss into which Leonard threw all of his suppressed frustration, his passion of the last three years.

He vaguely felt a thump and half-registered it as Jim’s back hitting the wall, but he focused on more important things: Jim’s arms wrapping around his neck and drawing him in closer, the sharp yet oh-so-satisfying occasional nip on his lip, the way that their tongues tangled together in long, slow strokes, every movement a perfect tempo that the two of them matched effortlessly.

Leonard didn’t know how long they kissed, how long his hands ran up and down Jim’s chest and arms and face and with Jim’s fingers digging into his skin in so many wonderful places, but when they finally broke for air, panting like a couple of teenagers, Leonard pulled back slightly, pressing his forehead against Jim’s and staring into those wide, blue, feverish, adoring eyes.

“Fuck yeah, darlin’.  We’ll rule it all.”


End file.
